Alice Munro's short story, "Boys and Girls," is a story of the way of life in the 1940s, where men and women had specific roles controlled by gender. They were expected to learn those roles as children and conform to them as adults. As the title suggested, males and females played separate and distinct roles from each other, with no one role blending into the other. Instead of saying "Girls and Boys," Munro chose to say "Boys and Girls." He is superior and she is subservient to him.
             Although Munro narrated the story through the voice of the girl, she did not give the girl a name. Her role, as a girl, was not important. Interestingly, Munro named the boy "Laird," another name for "Lord." The narrator wanted the reader to know that even though the boy was the younger of the two, he was superior, or Lord, over his older sister. Also interesting was how the narrator began the tale. "My father was a fox farmer," not "I grew up on a fox farm." The narrator, instead of focusing on herself, gave her father center stage.
             The men dominated the household. When Henry, the hired man, was introduced, the narrator detailed how disgusting he was. "He would cough and cough until his narrow face turned scarlet, then he took the lid off the stove and shot out a great clot of phlegm straight into the flames." Her mother said nothing. The woman did not have control even over the hired man in her own kitchen. The men could do what ever they wanted wherever they were. "She (mother) disliked the whole pelting operation and wished it did not have to take place in the house." The mother would not dare suggest to the father that they could pelt in the barn.
             The jobs that the men and women were responsible for further separated the sexes. The mother "did not often come out of the house unless it was to do something – hang out the wash or dig potatoes." The narrator found the work done in the house, where the women belonged, to be "e
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